Chapter 3

Chapter 3BellaFrom my vantage point on stage, I could get a good view of everything. The owners were sitting in the back at their regular table. Marco was running around trying to keep everyone happy. There were around thirty mobsters in the bar tonight and roughly half of them had girlfriends or wives with them. This was pretty par for the course, considering it was a Friday night.Even the Russo brothers had put in an appearance. Two out of the three of them have hit on me. Diego was either a sociopath or an edge lord of some sort. He made me incredibly uncomfortable. Nicco was a smooth talker, but he wasn’t my type at all. The third one just lurked around, never talked, and gave off serial killer vibes. Truth be told, they all gave off dangerous vibes in their own way, but I had to keep the customers happy. I nodded my head toward them as Nicco gave me a wave.Occasionally, we got a new customer at the bar. Tonight was one such night. I noticed all the newbies because I absolutely detested my job and was bored out of my skull. People-watching broke up the boredom and the fact I was essentially a prisoner. The new guy was a prick. I could tell because when our eyes met, he shook his head at me, as though I were interested, and he was rejecting me. It was super weird. This gangster was hot, but since I wasn’t interested in members of the mafia, I wasn’t about to try to get cozy with him.I finished my next two songs and then started mixing and mingling like I always did between sets. The Russo brothers were easy marks because they loved to drink and apparently had lots of expendable cash to blow on vodka with gold flakes floating in it—which was the drink of the evening I was trying to upsell. I sat down between the two non-psychopathic ones and allowed them to order me a drink.Nicco grinned at me. “What are you drinkin’ tonight, beautiful?”He was clearly flirting, so I responded in kind, “I’ll have what you’re having, handsome.”These boys were slick. They always ordered an extra glass in anticipation of me stopping by their table. He poured me an ice-cold shot of vodka and I downed it in one.“Easy, girl. You’ll be too drunk to walk, much less sing,” Diego warned.I held out my glass for Nicco to refill. “Good. Maybe my bosses will fire me, and I can get out of this joint.” I daydreamed about that every single day.Nicco snorted a laugh. “Don’t count on it, Isabella. You’re the best singer they’ve ever had.”I downed my second vodka and stood. “I guess I’m a victim of my own success.”I didn’t know if they realized the set up here, that I wasn’t working by choice. Maybe they didn’t—or maybe they did, and didn’t care.I took Nicco’s shot glass and tipped the remaining vodka into his mouth before walking off. I’d learned to flirt, tease, and play the part of the always beyond their reach seductress. That and my singing kept them all coming back, just like the owners wanted. Mr. Morelli was smiling serenely from across the room and raised his glass to me in the same kind of salutation he did my first night. As always, Mr. Lombardo was sitting beside him, pouting because his partner wouldn’t allow him to ravish me. Thank God for small mercies.Before I realized it, I was standing in front of the handsome stranger at the bar. I turned my body back and forth, blocking his view.My long red silk gown caught his eye. “What do you want?” he asked, he sounded annoyed. “Didn’t you get the message that I don’t want to talk to you?”I reached for the bowl on the bar and picked out some nuts. “I can’t imagine why. I’m pretty and can sing like an angel.” I was hell bent on annoying him for being a pompous ass hat.When he didn’t respond, I realized he was staring at the Russo brothers. “I see. You have a thing for men. I can introduce you if you want. There’s only one out of the three that swings that way, though.”That got his attention. “Stop talking about their personal life. You have no right.”I winked at him. “Oh, I get it. This is a love thing, not a lust thing. Which of the brothers did you have your heart set on?”“Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but I didn’t come here for the conversation.”“Fine. Have it your way, stranger.” I swaggered away, pleased with myself for annoying him.As the night wore on, the crowd began to thin out. Suddenly, there was a loud boom outside. At first, I thought it was a transformer that blew, but after looking out the window, I realized one of the vehicles in the parking lot was on fire.The Russo brothers grabbed a fire extinguisher, rushed outside, and tried to put it out. But it just kept burning. We all stood there in horror as the fire trucks and police showed up. It took me a few minutes to realize this wasn’t some kind of random accident. Someone intentionally set their nice new SUV on fire. By now, the whole bar had cleared out and the staff were locking up. I hesitated to pull myself away from the window, but then I caught a glimpse of the handsome stranger in the slowly dissipating crowd. He was just walking around, observing the scene like a newspaper reporter or cop. Something about this wasn’t right, but I didn’t get a chance to figure it out because I got rushed to my room by the manager. Marco treated me like a child and it was ten kinds of irritating.My phone lit up on my bedside table. After six months they’d finally relented and allowed me to have it back as it wasn’t as if I had anyone I could call. By that time, I had become accustomed to my new life—well, accustomed was one word, but Stockholm syndrome would be a better description. I’d given up fighting and accepted my fate.At least I was allowed to keep visiting my grandmother, that was the main thing they’d threatened me with. If I didn’t play nicely, then my grandma would be shifted out of her top-end nursing home and be left to rot in some state care facility.I checked my messages, it was a message from my grandmother’s nursing home. They didn’t need to tell me she was still in a coma. She’d had another stroke two months ago and had never regained consciousness. The machines were keeping her alive and we’d exhausted every modality of treatment known to mankind, but she’d just kept deteriorating. They had texted to inform me that she’d had another brain bleed, and scans showed no brain activity. I knew what that meant. Nothing really prepared a person for receiving news like this even though I knew it was coming. I felt a tear slide down my face as I typed out my agreement for them to take her off life support.***I tossed and turned, trying my very best to get to sleep. I hated nighttime because that was always when all my darkest nightmares came out to play. Tonight was gearing up to be a replay of all the ones I hated the most. My bad dreams always started out the same.I was on my pink tricycle as a kid. As the dream progressed, I grew larger while the bike remained the same. Eventually, I was a grown woman cramped up on this tiny kid’s bike. I couldn’t get off because there was someone chasing me, trying to grab me and tell me that I belonged to them. I peddled as fast as I could, but my childhood home never came into view. Instead, I saw storm clouds gathering overhead. The clouds cracked open, and I got drenched in cold rain.Suddenly, my grandmother’s voice called out, “Look out, child. The vulture’s going to get you.”Before I could even look up, a vulture landed on my shoulder and began trying to eat my hair. I looked up at the bird to find it had an old man’s face, one I recognized all too well. It was Lombardo, and he just kept pecking away at me, his hard beak digging into my head and face.I woke up screaming. It took me a good minute to realize that bird wasn’t real. I fell back onto my pillow, wishing there were a way out for me. I’d been here a year and a half, and I’d only seen my grandmother around ten times. Before I got caught up with these mobsters, I stopped by every day to read to her and brush her hair. It ripped my heart out to think my grandmother might believe I had abandoned her in her time of need. Unfortunately, my time was not my own. My life depended on me being submissive and obedient. I couldn’t run if I wanted to. I knew what happened to people who crossed my bosses.I’d seen a lot of strange things in my time at the club, most of which I didn’t entirely understand. They once closed the place down and brought in a bunch of naked Puerto Rican women and had them cutting and packaging drugs on the bar well into the night. The next morning, it was all gone. The bartender and I had been tasked with bleaching every surface in the bar. Another night, the bar had been shut down in order for the owners to unbox almost a hundred semi-automatic rifles. They repackaged them into smaller bundles, and then were gone by morning. They had tried printing counterfeit money at one point, but gave up after a few weeks because they could never get the bills to print well enough to pass for actual US currency. Then there was the illegal gambling. These men wagered on everything, from horse races to poker games that were often held in the small hours of the morning after the club closed. It was like they absolutely loved every vice known to mankind. There was so much crime going on around here that it boggled my mind. I couldn’t decide if it was all equally evil, or if there should be some kind of sliding scale of depravity.